Thoughts from
San Diego on Law, Politics, and Culture

 
Gaming the System
By Mike Rappaport

One always hears about how the U.S. News and World Report numbers are gamed by various law schools. In fact, some faculty members criticize their own schools for not gaming the system enough. But how do these schools do it? The New York Times has an interesting piece on this, which starts with this amazing example:

"Consider library costs at the University of Illinois College of Law in Urbana-Champaign. Like all law schools, Illinois pays a flat rate for unlimited access to LexisNexis and Westlaw's comprehensive online legal databases. Law students troll them for hours, downloading and printing reams of case law. To build user loyalty, the two suppliers charge institutions a total of $75,000 to $100,000 a year, far below per-use rates.

But in what it calls a longstanding practice, Illinois has calculated a fair market value for these online legal resources and submitted that number to U.S. News. For this year's rankings, the school put that figure at $8.78 million, more than 80 times what LexisNexis and Westlaw actually charge. This inflated expense accounted for 28 percent of the law school's total expenditures on students, according to confidential data filed with U.S. News and the bar association and provided to The New York Times by legal educators who are critical of rankings and concerned about the accurate reporting of data."
posted by Michael at 7/31/2005 07:04:00 PM